Death In Oslo

XXIX

‘A door. They found a door.’

Warren Scifford passed his hand over his eyes. His hair looked wet, as if he’d just washed it. He had changed out of his suit into jeans and a wide dark blue sweatshirt, with YALE written in big letters across the chest. His boots looked like they were made from real snakeskin. The outfit made him look older than he did in a suit. The fact that his skin was starting to loosen on his neck was more obvious in a baggy sweatshirt. His suntanned complexion no longer gave a healthy, sporty impression. On the contrary, there was something forced about his appearance in such youthful clothes that somehow highlighted the fact that his skin was unnaturally tanned for the time of year. He had one leg crossed over the other and might have looked like he was about to fall asleep, had it not been for the toe of the upper boot that was tapping nervously. Again he was lying more than sitting in the chair, with his elbows resting on the arms. ‘A door that we can confirm was checked by the Secret Service,’ Adam Stubo said. ‘By Jeffrey Hunter. When did you discover that he’d disappeared?’

Warren Scifford took his time straightening up. Only now did Adam notice that he had cut himself badly and the blood was seeping through a plaster just by his left ear. The smell of aftershave was a hint too strong.

‘He called in sick,’ the American said eventually.

‘When?’

‘On the morning of the sixteenth of May.’

‘So he was here before the President came to Norway?’

‘Yes. He was the person in charge of securing the hotel. He came here on the thirteenth.’

The Chief of Police, Bastesen, stirred his coffee. He watched the whirlpool in his cup with fascination.

‘I thought those guys were completely incorruptible,’ he mumbled in Norwegian. ‘No wonder we haven’t got anywhere.’

‘Pardon me?’ Warren Scifford snapped, obviously irritated.

‘So he called in sick,’ Adam interjected quickly. ‘It must have been something pretty serious, eh? For the person in charge of security at the hotel to call in sick twelve hours before the President arrives – can’t happen very often. I would assume that-’

‘The Secret Service had enough people,’ Warren interrupted. ‘And anyway, everything was on schedule. The hotel had been examined, plans had been made, parts of the area were cordoned off, a system had been set up. The Secret Service is never sloppy. They’ve got back-up for pretty much everything, no matter how unlikely it may seem.’

‘Well, I’m afraid it has to be said that they’ve been sloppy here,’ Adam said. ‘When one of their own special agents is involved in the disappearance of the elected president of the United States.’

The room was silent. The Director General of PST, Peter Salhus, unscrewed the lid of his Coke bottle. Terje Bastesen had finally put down his coffee cup.

‘We’re taking this very seriously indeed,’ he said after a while, and tried to catch the American’s eye. ‘You must have realised fairly early on that one of your own people was involved. The fact that you didn’t-’

‘No,’ Warren exclaimed sharply. ‘We were not…’

He stopped. Again he passed his hand over his eyes. It almost seemed that he wanted to hide them on purpose.

‘The Secret Service was not aware that Jeffrey Hunter had disappeared until late in the day yesterday,’ he said, after a pause that was so prolonged a secretary had had time to come in with yet another lukewarm pizza and a case of mineral water. ‘They had other things to think about. And yes, his illness did seem to be serious. A slipped disc. The guy couldn’t move. They tried pumping him full of painkillers in the morning of the sixteenth of May, but all he managed to do was lie in bed, dozing.’

‘Or so he said.’

Warren looked at Adam, and gave a hint of a nod. ‘Yes, that’s what he said.’

‘Was he examined by a doctor?’

‘No. Our people are medically trained. A slipped disc is a slipped disc, and there isn’t much to be done about it, except rest or have it operated on. And if that was going to happen, it would have to be after the President’s visit.’

‘An X-ray would have shown the truth.’

Warren didn’t bother to answer. Instead he leant over towards the pizza, wrinkled his nose ever so slightly and did not help himself.

‘And as far as the FBI are concerned,’ he said, taking a bottle of water instead, ‘we were not aware of anything until you showed me that film this afternoon. We have, of course, made our own investigations since. Compared them with what the Secret Service has found out…’

Warren got up and went over to the window. They were in the Chief of Police’s office on the sixth floor of the Police HQ, and had a fantastic view of the grey May night. The lights from the media village on the grass outside the window were stronger now, and continued to grow in number. It was only an hour or so now until the darkest time of night, but the grass was bathed in artificial light. The trees along the road to the prison were like a wall against the dark on the other side of the park.

He drank some water, but said nothing.

‘Could it be something as simple as money?’ Peter Salhus asked quietly. ‘Money for his family?’

‘If only it was that simple,’ Warren said to his own reflection in the window. ‘It was the children. And now there’s a desperate widow sitting somewhere in a residential area between Baltimore and Washington DC who realises that she and her husband have done something terrible. They’ve got three children. The youngest is autistic, but given the circumstances he’s doing OK. He goes to a special school. It’s expensive and Jeffrey Hunter presumably had to watch every penny to make it possible. But he had never accepted black money. There is nothing to indicate that. However, the boy has been kidnapped twice in the past two months. Each time he reappeared again before a full alarm was raised, but he was gone long enough for the parents to panic. The message was clear: do what you’re asked to do in Oslo, or the boy will disappear for good.’

Peter Salhus was genuinely shocked when he asked: ‘But would an experienced Secret Service agent let himself be blackmailed in that way? Couldn’t he just make sure that his family was put under protection? A government agent, if anyone, must surely be able to withstand such a threat.’

Warren was still standing with his back to them. His voice was flat, as if he nearly couldn’t bear to get involved in the story.

‘The boy was taken from his school the first time, which should, in practice, be impossible. Public and especially private schools, like this one, are hysterical when it comes to the safety of their pupils. But someone managed to do it. The boy was then sent into hiding with an old school friend of his mother’s in California. Here he was given home tutoring, and no one, not even his brother and sister, knew where he was. But he disappeared from there too, one afternoon. He was only gone for four hours, and neither the school friend nor anyone else could explain how it had happened. But the message was crystal clear.’

With a short burst of dry laughter, Warren finally turned around and went back to his chair.

‘They would find the boy, no matter what. Jeffrey Hunter felt like he had no choice. But obviously the betrayal was too much to live with. The shame. He realised full well that sooner or later someone would discover that he was involved; that someone at some point would think about checking the CCTV footage from the time after the kidnapping.’

‘So he wandered the streets of Oslo until it was late enough to take a bus up to the forest,’ Bastesen summarised. ‘And then he walked into the forest for a while, hid himself in a ditch and killed himself with his own government-issue weapon. Poor man, he can’t have been in a good way, walking up towards Skar, knowing that he only had a few more minutes to live. That he would never-’

Adam felt a slight flush rising in his cheeks as a result of the Chief of Police’s clumsy speech, and quickly interrupted. ‘Could Jeffrey Hunter’s suicide be an explanation for why we haven’t heard anything from the kidnappers? After all, they said in the note that was left in the suite that they would be in touch.’

‘I doubt it,’ Warren said. ‘Particularly as Jeffrey Hunter was nothing more than a cog, really. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything other than getting the President out of the hotel.’

‘I’m afraid I have to contradict you a bit there,’ Adam said. ‘I don’t see how the information about the President’s clothes can have come from anywhere other than inside.’

‘What do you mean? Clothes?’

‘The two cars that were driving around…’ Adam lifted two fingers, and then interrupted himself. ‘We’ve found the driver of the second car, by the way. We’re getting just as little out of him as we are from Gerhard Skrøder. Same sort of lowlife good-for-nothing, same methods, same incredible fee.’

‘But the clothes,’ Warren repeated. ‘What about them?’

‘The red jacket, the elegant blue trousers. White silk blouse. The national colours of the States and Norway. Whoever is behind the kidnapping must have known what she was going to wear. The lookalikes had the same clothes on. Not exactly the same, but they looked similar enough to make the decoy successful. We lost a lot of valuable time and effort chasing shadows.’

Adam took a deep breath, hesitated and then continued: ‘I take it as given that Madam President has both a hairdresser and a dresser with her when she travels. What have they got to say?’

Warren Scifford was obviously having problems. His poker face, which normally made it possible for him to lie without blinking, had disintegrated into a dejected, tired expression. His mouth seemed narrower and Adam could see the muscles in his face tensing.

‘I’m actually quite impressed by the way you consistently manage to underestimate us,’ Adam said in a low voice. ‘Don’t you think that we considered that problem a long time ago? Don’t you realise that we have long feared that it might be an inside job? Don’t you understand that you, by playing Mr Secret, have poured petrol on the flames?’

‘The President’s clothes are recorded on a computer,’ Warren said.

‘Which anyone has access to?’

‘No. But her secretary has an overview. And she has a very good relationship with Jeffrey Hunter. They are… were good friends. They had talked about the… national day that you celebrate here at an information lunch in early May. We have of course questioned the secretary and she can’t for the life of her remember who brought up the topic. But anyway, they talked about the fact that the President had bought lots of new clothes for her first overseas visit. Including a jacket that she was going to wear on the Norwegian national day in exactly the same shade of red as the Norwegian flag. Someone had told her that you are quite… sensitive about things like that.’

A fleeting smile crossed his face, but no one responded.

‘And you are a hundred per cent certain that no one else from your people is involved? That Jeffrey Hunter was operating alone?’

‘As certain as it’s possible to be,’ Warren Scifford said. ‘But with all due respect, I have to say that I don’t like the direction this meeting has taken at all. I’m not here to be lectured by you. I’m here to give you the information you need to find President Bentley. And to hear how far you’ve got with the investigation.’

There was a hint of irony in his voice as he straightened his back. Terje Bastesen cleared his throat and put down the coffee cup that seemed to be a permanent fixture in his hand. He was about to say something when Adam pipped him to the post.

‘Don’t even go there,’ he said.

His voice was friendly, but his eyes narrowed enough to make Warren blink.

‘You know everything from our side,’ Adam said. ‘We give you the information as soon as we can get hold of you. Which has proved to be difficult at times, by the way. We have two thousand people…’ he stopped, as if he had only just grasped the huge number, ‘working on this case, from the police organisations alone. In addition, there are the people from the ministries, the directorates and, to a certain extent, the mili-’

‘We have a total of sixty-two thousand Americans,’ Warren interrupted without raising his voice, ‘who at this moment are trying to establish who kidnapped the President. In addition-’

‘This is not a competition!’

Everyone looked at Peter Salhus. He had stood up. Adam and Warren exchanged looks like two boys who had been caught quarrelling in the playground by the headmaster.

‘There can be absolutely no doubt that this is a top-priority investigation in both countries,’ Salhus said. His voice was even deeper than normal. ‘And I’m quite sure that the Americans are looking at the possibilities of a bigger conspiracy and context. The CIA, FBI and NSA have adopted quite a new… let’s say attitude to exchanging information and intelligence over the past twenty-four hours. It is counterproductive to say the least, but doesn’t prevent us from seeing the direction in which you’re working. We also have our sources, which I’m sure you know about. And it is, of course, only a matter of time before journalists in the US get wind of the methods you are using.’

Warren didn’t blink.

‘And that will be your problem,’ Salhus said and shrugged. ‘My interpretation of the data we’ve received, which I’ve compared with the information that cannot be kept out of the public domain…’

He bent down and pulled a document from a file lying on the floor by the chair he had just got up from.

‘Very limited air traffic,’ he read. ‘Complete stop of air traffic from certain countries, most of them Muslim. Extensive reductions in staff in public offices. Schools have been closed until further notice.’ He waved the paper around before putting it back in the file. ‘And I could go on. The sum of it all is obvious. You expect further attacks. Attacks with far greater consequences than stealing the American president.’

Warren Scifford opened his mouth and raised his hand.

‘Spare us your protests,’ the Norwegian director of intelligence said. His bass voice trembled with suppressed anger. ‘I will only repeat what Stubo here just said. Do not underestimate us.’

His great index finger was only centimetres from the American’s nose.

‘What you have to remember, what you have to remember…’

Warren wrinkled his brow and pulled his head back. Salhus just came closer. His finger was shaking.

‘… is that it is us, the Norwegian police, who have a chance of solving this case. The actual case. It is us, and us alone, who are able to map out the actual event, how the American president was taken from her hotel room in Oslo… how on earth that could even happen in the first place. D’you understand?’

Warren sat completely still.

‘So you can carry on trying to place the event in a bigger context, without any interference from us. Do you understand?’

The man gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Salhus took a deep breath, lowered his hand and continued. ‘What I find incredible is that not only are you refusing to help us, but you are in fact sabotaging our investigation by not giving us information like, for example, the fact that a Secret Service agent has mysteriously disappeared.’

He was standing right in front of the American.

‘If an old lady out for a walk in the forest had not wandered off the track into the ditch, and then collapsed unconscious a few metres away, we would have had no idea that…’

Peter Salhus coughed and paused, as if he really had to stop himself flying into a rage.

‘I have, together with the Chief of Police, Mr Bastesen here, the Minister of Justice and the Foreign Minister, sent a formal complaint to your government,’ he continued, without sitting down. ‘And it was copied to the Secret Service and the FBI.’

‘I’m afraid that my government, the FBI and the Secret Service have more serious things to worry about at the moment than a complaint,’ Warren said, without any expression. ‘But please… be my guest! I can’t stop you from corresponding with others if you have the time for that sort of thing.’

He got up suddenly and grabbed the military-green sports jacket that was hanging over the arm of the chair.

‘I’m basically done here,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ve got what I came for. And you’ve got something out of it too. A satisfactory meeting, in other words.’

The three other men in the room were so astonished by this sudden closure that they couldn’t think of anything to say. Warren Scifford had to put his hand on Salhus’ arm to move him out of the way.

‘And by the way,’ the American said, turning around once he had crossed the room; the others still could think of nothing sensible to say. ‘You’re wrong about who’s going to solve this case. The actual case, as you called it. As if a kidnapping can be detached from the motives, planning, consequences and context.’

He was smiling broadly with his mouth, but his eyes were anything but friendly.

‘The party that finds the President,’ he added, ‘is the one that will be able to solve the case. The whole case. And I unfortunately doubt that it will be you. That worries…’ he stared straight at Salhus, ‘my government, the FBI and the Secret Service. But good luck, to be sure. And good night.’

The door slammed behind him, a bit too loudly.